The use of portable telephones is becoming more common. Such devices offer convenience and freedom of movement. Cellular portable telephones are an example of portable telephones that are particularly useful in a highly mobile environment, such as an automobile, for example.
Given a freedom of movement or mobile environment, users of portable telephones are increasingly combining other activities with communicating on a portable telephone. For example, driving an automobile while conversing on a telephone. It is relatively easy to converse on a telephone while doing other activities because all the user need do is hold the telephone with one hand, speak and listen. Alternatively, hands-free features are available on telephones that eliminate the need to hold the telephone, thereby freeing both hands for other activities. However, initiating a telephone call requires more user attention than merely conversing on a telephone.
To initiate a call, the user must select a telephone number and enter the various digits into the telephone and finally start the call by pressing a key on the telephone. While this may appear simple, it actually involves holding the telephone with one hand, entering digits with the other hand, and looking at the telephone to select the correct keys to be pressed, to achieve the desired results. In a mobile environment, such as an automobile, these distractions are inconvenient, or even dangerous to the driver of the automobile.
To alleviate the foregoing problem, several inventions have be conceived and reduced to practice. U.S. Pat. No. 4,644,107 to Clowes et al. discloses a "dialess" telephone the utilizes a voice recognition system that recognizes each digit spoken by the user and dials the telephone number accordingly. Likewise, U.S. Pat. No. 4,870,686 to Gerson et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,095,503 to Kowalski, and others have expanded on the voice recognition concept by adding voice synthesizers which echo the spoken word back to the user to verify that the spoken word was correctly recognized. Each of these systems is an improvement over the previous. However, the mobile environment, with its high ambient noise level, complicates the process of voice recognition and cause such devices to be more complex and expensive than other portable telephones. Also, the user typically must remember either the number to be called or some other phrase which identifies the desired number.
Other systems employ a voice synthesis module that utters the digits in a telephone number that has been stored in a memory in a portable telephone. This type of system has the advantage of allowing the user to scroll through a list of telephone number, listening to each in turn, and initiating a call when the desired number is heard. In such a system, the user can operate the telephone with one hand and merely listen for the desired number. Thus freeing the other hand and the eyes for other activities. However, it is not always easy or convenient to remember each telephone number and who or what it is associated with. Furthermore, since there are numerous languages and dialects, voice synthesis systems are somewhat limited in their application.
Clearly, it would be desirable to have a system that allowed for scrolling through a list of memories, each being identified by a verbal utterance that was a familiar reminder of the called party to the user, such as "home", "office", "police", etc. Furthermore, it would be desirable for such a system to be usable in any language or any dialect, and especially if the system could utter the users own words, which had been previously recorded and linked to a particular telephone number.